The Central African Republic (CAR) yesterday voted in presidential and legislative elections being held under a cloud of violence as the government, international partners and UN peacekeepers seek to hold off a rebel advance.
Militias hostile to CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera, who is seeking a second term, have stepped up attacks since the country’s constitutional court this month rejected several candidates, including former CAR president Francois Bozize.
Touadera is considered the favorite in the field of 17 candidates. The election will go to a second round if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote.
Photo: EPA-EFE
There was a delay of about 50 minutes before some polling stations in the capital, Bangui, opened as voting materials had not been delivered on time.
Sporadic gunfire was also heard during the night, a witness said.
“It’s very important for me to be here, as a citizen. I think this vote will change our country, whoever the president will be,” Hortense Reine, a teacher, said outside a voting place in the city’s east, where around 30 people were queueing.
Senior election officials said that where polling stations had opened late, voting would continue for an additional 50 minutes.
“There are security risks surrounding the elections, but I will go and cast my ballot,” 29-year-old Lionel Fotot said on Thursday, as he went to get his voter’s registration card at a school in Bangui.
Others were less optimistic, fearing that fighting might undermine the vote.
“Everyone is fleeing at the moment. I’m holed up at home,” Robert, from Boali, 80km north of Bangui, told AFP by telephone, explosions audible in the background. “How do we vote when we don’t even have our voter cards?”
Heavy gunfire was reported early yesterday in the town of Bouar, 435km northwest of the capital, a resident said.
The crisis has left many in the diamond and gold-rich nation of 4.7 million exhausted, while stirring fears of a return to the worst violence of its recent past, which includes five coups since independence from France in 1960.
Touadera was first elected in 2016 following a rebellion three years earlier that ousted Bozize. He has struggled to wrest control of parts of the country from militias.
Successive waves of violence have since 2013 killed thousands and forced more than 1 million from their homes.
Touadera and the UN, which has more than 12,800 peacekeepers in the country, have accused Bozize of being behind the rebel offensive, which briefly seized the country’s fourth largest city last week and has led to a wave of desertions from the armed forces.
Bozize’s candidacy was rejected because he faces an arrest warrant and UN sanctions for allegedly ordering assassinations and torture while in office. Bozize has denied the accusations.
Touadera’s international security partners have responded to the latest violence by sending additional troops and equipment, including 300 Russian military instructors and 300 Rwandan peacekeepers.
Additional reporting by AFP
Some say that the third time’s a charm. Not so for SpaceX, whose unmanned rocket on Wednesday exploded on the ground after carrying out what had seemed to be a successful flight and landing — fresh on the heels of two fiery crashes. It was yet another flub involving a prototype of the Starship rocket, which SpaceX hopes one day to send to Mars. “A beautiful soft landing,” a SpaceX commentator said on a live broadcast of the test flight, although flames were coming out at the bottom and crews were trying to put them out. The rocket exploded a few minutes later,
‘GRAVE CONCERN’: A critic of the government died immediately following his complaints of torture at the hands of security forces, a human rights group said Students on Friday clashed with police in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, as anger mounted at the death of a writer and government critic in a high-security jail. At least 18 police and an unknown number of protesters were injured in the clashes, authorities and witnesses said, amid international demands for an independent investigation into the death of Mushtaq Ahmed. An Agence France-Presse correspondent witnessed police using batons and firing tear gas at students who staged a torchlight march calling for “justice” near the University of Dhaka. At least six students who allegedly attacked security forces with torches were detained, police said. More protests were planned
LEGAL ORDEAL: The heavy caseload involving 47 defendants and the vagaries of a Beijing-imposed security law made it difficult for the court to rule on bail requests Dozens of Hong Kong democracy advocates charged with subversion yesterday returned to court to complete a marathon bail hearing that was adjourned overnight when four defendants were rushed to hospital after hours of legal wrangling. Police on Sunday arrested 47 of the territory’s best-known dissidents for “conspiracy to commit subversion” in the broadest use yet of a sweeping National Security Law that Beijing imposed on the territory last year. The defendants represent a broad cross-section of Hong Kong’s opposition, from veteran former pro-democracy lawmakers to academics, lawyers, social workers and youth advocates. Hundreds of supporters gathered outside a courthouse on Monday for the
China, under growing global pressure over its treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, is mounting an unprecedented and aggressive campaign to push back, including explicit attacks on women who have made claims of abuse. As allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang mount, with a growing number of Western lawmakers accusing China of genocide, Beijing is focusing on discrediting the female Uighur witnesses behind reports of abuse. Chinese officials have named women, disclosed medical data and information on their fertility, and accused some of having affairs and one of having a sexually transmitted disease. Officials said that the information was evidence of bad character,
RSS